Andy Chase

Below is the pattern used in this card, showing the radial grid used to lay the piece out.

The fisheye lens effect would be further enhanced if the circles of the grid became progressively farther apart as they spread from the center, but I can't think of an easy way to accomplish this in Illustrator.

Building on yesterday's experiment with oblique origamic architecture, I tried using a grid whose vertical lines radiate from the same origin as the horizontal lines: (The Illustrator 10 "Polar Grid" tool is very handy for this)

I recently saw some of Hannah Biemold's oblique origamic architecture by way of the Evermore Origamic Architecture mailing list, and decided to have a go at the oblique technique myself. (Please pardon the flimsy paper and rough cuts - this is just a proof of concept)

The main feature of this one is the staircase on the first level that goes left, right, and back... fairly tricky to lay out and trickier to cut, score and actually fold.

This was the first model I did where I was careful to reverse score the appropriate lines on the side of the paper opposite the template; I used a pin to make small holes at each end of the line to be scored.

Those stairs are a mess of closely drawn lines on the template, and despite my careful planning I scored some of them on the wrong side. Everything came out OK in the end, but it probably would have been easier if everything was scored to fold in the right direction.

This is the first card I did after the bug bit me again last week, and I discovered the numerous origamic architecture web sites out there.

I decided to incorporate curves along the horizontal planes, something I had never really done much with before. I think it looks nice, although it does have a bit of a 70's vibe to it. I also miscalculated the offset of the semicircular platform on the second level; the curve was supposed to be concentric with the lower level.

I did the actual design in a vector-based illustration program and printed it onto a sheet of Epson Heavy-weight Matte paper. This turned out to be a tiny bit heavy, although in fairness I should also note that I didn't bother to reverse-score the fold lines on the opposite site of the piece when cutting it out; in the past I always used flimsy paper and I could get away with scoring everything on the back side.

This is an older model, probably done a couple of years ago. It's been sitting on top of a bookshelf for some time now. The design was drawn directly onto the back of the paper with pencil and ruler, and the paper itself is plain old cheap inkjet/photocopier paper. (Notice how everything sags.)